I still have a very vivid memory of my Philosophy textbook, back as an highschool student in Italy. The front cover and the table of contents can still re-surface to my memory: here I remember in particular a chapter about Freud, one about Nietzsche, four about Marx, followed up by a series of chapters about the so called “post revolutionary” philosophers. The final one was about the life and work of Gadamer.
Later in life I would realise there was something wrong: no chapters were devoted to the philosopher whose influence on his contemporaries led to the resurgence and liberation of Italy. Why was he forgotten?
To make amend, in this post I will be introducing the history around the life of Mazzini, his main ideas, his position in respect to his contemporaries, in particular Marx, and under this perspective I will talk about the reasons why Italian students and former students, even though attending “G. Mazzini” Highschool, or roaming around the various Via Mazzini of Italy, are clueless about him and his ideas.
One of the mottos of our philosopher, as well as the title of one of the magazines he founded, summarising his vision, was Thought and Action.
In this article I will be following that motto: only in opposite direction. Like physicists, I will start observing the phenomenon, i.e. his actions and his environment, to then dive deep into the details of the laws governing those actions, which are the philosophical thoughts.
Action: the Progressivism and the Resurgence
“Religions move the world”, as Mazzini used to say, and the Italian resurgence was mainly a period of religious contrasts within Europe, and within an Italy occupied by the the Vatican state and divided into faiths, lands, languages, though not divided in the hearts and the will of its people. Let me bring you back in the past, right into the middle of the ‘800, when the echoes of illuminism and French republicanism, as the duty of the individuals towards the progress of humanity was fully integrated in some protestant religious currents, such as the one of Jansenists.
The earlier emergence of trades and craftsmanships, the late middle age gilds, the diffusion of credits and banks, the spreading infrastructures and the following early industrialisation, all have contributed to the birth of the subsequently hated bourgeoisie, hence making Catholicism and the obedience to the clergy and nobleman a fundamentally obsolete philosophy and existential attitude. Until then, catholicism had worked to govern the relationships between the few powerful men and the multitude of dispossessed serfs, though it was of little use to establish the rules between potentates, nations, and wealthy non-noble families, whose capitals, thanks to the technological progress, was often higher than the ones of the nobility. The Protestant religions arose to fill this gap. Their main difference in respect to to Catholicism was on the theological level: the preclusion of trading grace and divine salvation. Though the practical consequence was the centrality of self education and working ethics, and therefore protestant ideas were fertile soil to grow the illuminists ideas, and subsequently the ‘800 progressivism. In the resurgent Jansenism, unlike intended during illuminism, the man and the logic alone are not enough, and the reason becomes a gnostic and divine instrument to pursue the spiritual as well as material self realisation, thanks to the free provided by God, and leading to the progress of the individual and the following progress of humanity.
Also the need of “making Italy”, was based upon religious grounds, and as part of a moral and divine design, even though against and in strong opposition with the Vatican state. The borders, according to Mazzini, must be drawn by God rather than men. And in saying so, he meant that to each border there must correspond a natural barrier, such as a river, a mountain, a sea, a lake, or otherwise in those places where the divisions are only man made, it will be impossible for conflicts not to arise.
And the nineteen century, Italy abounded both in conflicts and borders.
Divided in ducats, great-ducats, reigns, states and empires, not to miss a thing, Italy was the land where the many succumbed to the smarts, to the climbers, and the Machiavellic grabbers. There were though the revolts against the power, already happening in 1821, that would have inspired the civil conscience of the sixteen years old Mazzini, a precocious student already attending the university of Genova, Reign of Sardinia. At his graduation with a degree in law, in 1827, obtained after a period of practicum and in opposition to his father, who wanted him doctor as himself, Mazzini joined the secret society of Carbonari, or Carboneria, whose goal was the unification of Italy. Many amongst the most powerful states in the world of his times were in sharp opposition to this endeavour: Austrian empire, Bourbons in Spain, the Vatican state, and of course the shortly re-established French monarchy. All were keen on maintaining their military occupation, the games of power and the taxations. Also the small state of the reign of Sardinia, headed by the Savoy family was initially against the unification of Italy, even though the rebellious crowd was in many cases asking to have the country united under their crown.
In favour of the unification of Italy were though the many Italians across the peninsula, from Palermo to Naples, from Milan to Florence. Initially they were acting through sporadic and ill organised protests, constantly ending in nothing but violent military repression. Italian populations felt vexed by an overlooking and unwanted power, and considered themselves as conquered people under the yoke of a retrograde governors, that was not up to date with what was happening in the rest of the world, and in particular in the new world. Frustrations and social pressure were building up.
For what Great Britain is concerned, we do not know how and to what extent the Crown participated in favouring the unification of Italy, and the topic is still debated amongst historians today. Certainly there were connections between the Carboneria and the government of Great Britain, and certainly the subsequent enterprise made by Garibaldi was seen under a favourable eye by Albion. We can speculate about the reasons for the interests in the unification, going back to the reasons why the rebellions in ’21 have started. These were a consequence of the Spanish army refusing to sail to the new continent to sedata the independentists rebellions in the Spanish colonies, and certainly the Great Britain was not against them. Moreover the ongoing Catholic emancipation could have been a source of preoccupation for Lord Liverpool, and the perspective of a defeat of the temporal power of the Vatican state, which was extending its tentacles over the islands could have only been seen favourably.
Though, the failure of Carbonari, both at a military and at a diplomatic level, culminated with their defeat in 1831. The main cause was the betrayal of the duke of Modena: he pretended to side with the Carbonari in exchange for a role in the post-revolutionary Italy, while selling the names of the conjurors to the Austrian government. Also Mazzini was amongst them, and he was arrested in Savoy, while the founder of the Carbonari Ciro Menotti, was arrested in the reign of Modena. The difference was substantial as different potentate had different rules: Menotti was condemned to death, Mazzini to exile.
Nonetheless, neither loosing his friend, nor prison and exile seemed to bothered Mazzini, whose political activity did nothing but increasing through writing tirelessly articles for the press, open letters to the pope and to the powerful people of his time, and as well as the creation of political magazines. He also made a radical change to his wardrobe, deciding to wear only black, to mourn the death of his nation. A regular dress code would have been adopted by him only after the unification of Italy in 1861.
Before the exile, during his days as a prisoner in the fort of Priamar in Savona, we can have an idea about his methods of communicating with the “friends” outside his cell. From his autobiography we can read:
[…] Every ten days I was to receive, opened of course and read by the governor of Genova and the heads of the prison, a letter from my mother, and I was allowed to answer to her, but only in the presence of Antonietti [prison ward, described by Mazzini as “old Sergent” and “benevolent guardian”] and only if giving him the envelop still open.
Though these precautions were no obstacle of the way of communication between myself and my friends, that we established in case of capture. We had to form the words, moreover in latin, with the first letter of every other word. The friends were laying down the first eight or nine lines for my mother; and for what I was concerned I had plenty of time to architect and commit to memory the sentences with the hidden words I needed to write. […]
Still able to communicate with his assocaites during the days in prison, despite a very strict surveillance, he would have continued with a restless political activity also during his days as exiled, at the point that his acute intelligence and his active spirit impressed also his enemies. The Austrian state councillor, bearing the long name of Klemens Wenzel Nepomuk Lothar von Metternich-Winneburg-Beilstein, Count and Prince of Metternich-Winneburg, offered his respect to the hated Mazzini with the following words:
| «I had to fight with the greatest of the soldier, Napoleon. I had sealed agreements amongst emperors, kings, and popes. Nobody gave me more trouble than an Italian bandit: skinny, pale, ragged, but eloquent like the tempest, ardent like an apostle, smart like a thief, jaunty like a comedian, tireless like a somebody in love. His name is Giuseppe Mazzini.» |
| – Klemens von Metternich |
During hist first imprisonment (first of a series of four), from which he was cleared for lack of evidence despite his subversive messages were passing right under the nose of the governors, he thought about the continuation of the secret society Carboneria, which he re-created as soon as arrived in Marseille exiled. The name of the new Carboneria would have been “Giovane Italia”.
It was from Marseille, in 1831, that he wrote to Carlo Alberto, king of Savoy, a long and famous letter signed with “un Italiano”, an Italian. It started with:
Sir,
If I believed you were a vulgar king, of inept or tyrannical soul, I would not write you the letter of a free man. Kings of such moral temper leave the citizen to chose either the gun or the silence. […]
And after this captatio benevolentiae, with a not so hidden warning message, he continued with an exhortation to unite Italy under his guide:
[…] We will paint for our brothers the advantages deriving from the union: we will provoke the national subscriptions, the patriotic gifts: we will preach the word that creates the armies, and, unearthed the bones of our fathers, slaughtered by strangers, we will lead the masses to the war against the barbarian as to an holy crusade. Unite us, Sir, and we will win, as we are that people that Bonaparte refused to unite, as too afraid they would have conquered France and Europe. […]
The letter was ending with:
[…] Sir! I have told you the truth. The free men are awaiting for your answer in facts. Whatever it may be, remain strong the posterity will proclaim in you – the first amongst Italian man or the last amongst Italian tyrant. Choose!
These words were not enough to convince the King to act, though they convinced his general, Saluzzo Lamanta, to ratify a death penalty sentence against Mazzini. And Mazzini, not trusting France too much at that point in time, a country which did not approve the unification of Italy, continued his exile in Swiss, in the Soletta canton. Also this stay lasted for only a short period, as he was arrested by the cantonal police, as a treat to the neutrality of the country: he was then asked to continue his exile elsewhere. Mazzini, never discouraged, continued his journey towards North, and in 1837 he finally established his home in London, where he remained for the following 35 years.
And London offered him a home and provided to be fertile ground to cultivate his ideas, and amongst other things, gave him the chance to found school for poor Italian boys. During his time in London he become acquainted with Mary Shelley, Anne Milbanke, John Stuart Mill, Thomas Carlyle, Charles Dickens, Algernon Swinburne, and many other personalities belonging to the world of literature, politics and economics.
Also in London, Mazzini was the first one denouncing a racket in child trafficking (surprisingly for Mazzini as well, Italian children). Convinced to leave their homes and families with lies, these children were then obliged to beg and sometimes to pickpocket Londoners and tourists.
Let us use his words to dive into the facts that have happened:
[…] While walking on the alleys of the vast city, and getting along with some of these youngsters roaming around the pavement with the street organ, I learned, with real astonishment and profound pain, the condition of this kind of racket, which I would not know how to call other than white slave trade. Led by a few speculators, it is the shame of Italy, of who sits in government, and the clergy, who would, if not lacking the will, stop it.
Five or six Italians, living in London, broken to every ill doing and careless about anything except their profit, travel from time to time to Italy. There, roaming around the agricultural districts of Liguria and in the land of Parma, they get into the families of the highlanders, and where they find the children more numerous, they propose the most possible seducing pacts: abundant food, clothings, high end housing, fatherly caring […]. The youngsters, so gathered, follow the speculators, and once arrived in London they find themselves slaves. […]
I was seeing them, on winter’s evening, shaking with cold and hunger, begging for a penny of half a penny to the crowd, when the daily quota was not reached – as it was often the case in that season – to get at the amount of money the needed to be able to get back home. […]
Faithful to his motto, thought and action, Mazzini set up a school for these boys, at 5 Hatton Garden, also thanks to the fundings of a few friends of the caliber of Charles Dickens. Mazzini also tells to have brought these criminal traders in front of the British courts multiple times:
[…] And knowing that they were watched was enough to persuade them to have less cruel and arbitrary manners. But the school was fiercely opposed by them and by the priests of the Sardinian Chapel [annexed to the Sardinian Reign Embassy in London, in 54 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, demolished in 1909], and from the political agents from Italy. It prospered, nonetheless. Founded on the 10th of November 1841, it lasted until 1848, when my long absence and the idea that the Italian rebellions, that grew stronger in the meantime, would have opened all the ways to the popular teaching in Italy, made the people directing the school with me determined to close it. […]
Several sources are also saying that during his London period, Mazzini and Karl Marx (himself also exiled during the same period) were neighbours. In my short research, this fact had found no proofs.
Mazzini lived in:
- Sabloniere, in Leicester Square, for the first few weeks.
- 24 Goodge Street W1T 2QF for some weeks,
- 8 Laystall St, EC1R 4PA, today known as Casa Mazzini,
- 187 N Gower St, Euston Rd, NW1 2NJ that back then was 9 George Street, and today remembered by a commemorative blue plaque. For a curious case, the same building will be then used as the home of Sherlock Holmes in the 2010 TV series with Benedict Cumberbatch).
- It is also mentioned a “Devonshir Street, Queen Square” as his residence, by Mazzini himself in one of his letters. It is difficult to say if he meant Devonshire Square, or if it is Devonshire Road (some websites reports a on existing 47 Devonshire street, Queen Square as his house).
On the other hand Marx lived in:
- 28 Dean St, W1D 3RZ where, at the hight of the second floor it is possible to see a blue plaque, despite the contrariety of the owner of the building, hosting today a luxury restaurant.
- 41 Maitland Park Rd, NW3 2EX: the initial blue plaques were destroyed in two vandalic episodes, and today there is only one left on a building in the surroundings, further north, along the same road.
- 46 Grafton Terrace, Belsize Park NW5 4HY, here as well no plaques are to be found.
(We have to observe at this point that no Mazzini plaque was ever vandalised, nor anybody opposed to a Mazzini plaque’s presence on a building).
Certainly not neighbours, I could not tell if the patriot and the revolutionary had ever met in person, but certainly, as we will see in the next chapters, Mazzini knew (and criticised) Marx ideas. We also know that Marx, in return, was not particularly fond himself neither of Garibaldi, nor of Mazzini. He was in fact mentioning them as “piece of donkey” and “poor ineffectual” the latter.
From London, very attentive to the European political developments, and surrounded by exiled and patriots of different countries, Mazzini contributed to the foundation of a few political movements, such as the Young Germany, the Young Poland, and lastly in 1834 during a meeting in Berna, the Young Europe, hoping for every country in Europe to get at the same dream of a united republic, and lastly, hoping for the creation of the United States of Europe.
Every one of his organisations was open to every social class, and open to women. Amongst the participants there were in fact amongst many, also Bellerio Sidoli, Cristina di Belgiojoso, Jessie White, and Giorgina Saffi.
He moved back to Italy for a short period, after the rebellions of ’48, that culminated with the 5 days of Milan and the flight of the Pope. As soon as arrived in Rome he founded the Roman Republic, alongside with Carlo Armellini, Aurelio Saffi and a small army of volunteers, thinking of having founded that very Republic that would have been destined to integrate the whole peninsula and the islands. Destiny had different ideas though: that the Republic had a short life spanlasing only between February and April ’49. Defeated by the French army guided by the to be Napoleon III, Mazzini was not able to get the alliances that were needed to win, or better avoid, a war with so powerful enemy.
Nonetheless, the constitution of the Roman Republic, and the very first republican period of Italy, even if small scaled, attracted a range of intellectuals and republicans from the whole Italy, such as Goffredo Mameli, and it was the place where the universal suffrage, abolition of death penalty, abolition of nobility and clerical titles, and freedom of religion were instituted and became concrete possibilities, way ahead of its times. Moreover, Mazzini, even if against the opinion of Garibaldi, led the war avoiding massacres and freeing the prisoners after every battle. This was mainly caused to leave the possibility to arrange an agreement open, and to not provoke the enemy in sending his whole army against which the Roman Republic would have been hopeless. This was not enough to avoid the final defeat, happened with the siege of Rome of the April of ’49, which saw 30’000 French soldiers surrounding the city for two months of war.
On the 15th of June, during the siege Mazzini wrote to Lesseps, French ministry of foreign affairs:
[…] Today, your cannons thundered against our walls, your bombs are falling over the sacred city; France had tonight the glory of murdering a poor maid on the Trastevere, while sleeping near her sister.
Our young officials, our improvised militants, our people are falling under your bullets shouting “Viva la Repubblica!”. The proud French soldiers are falling without a sound, no accent murmured, as dishonoured man. I am sure that there is not a single heart amongst yours not whispering to you what one of your deserters was telling us today: “I do not know which secret voice is telling us we are fighting brothers”. […]
After the capitulation, Garibaldi found a safe haven in the republic of San Marino, while Mazzini, Saffi ed Amellini escaped, before in Switzerland, and then Mazzini and Saffi, moved once again to London where where they could continue with their activities, subversive for some, patriotic for others. Armellini instead, demoralised, moved to Belgium and left politics behind.
If to see another republic in Italy we will have to wait until 1946, the facts of Rome and the repeating revolts and perennial tensions had continued to stimulate the idea of a possible unification of Italy, under the guide of the Savoy Monarchy. Certainly France had lost man and resources in suffocating the Rebellious Roman Republic, and it did it also to the benefit of the Bourbons, the Austrians, and the Vatican state, with no tangible benefit for itself. Another similar military campaign would not be sustainable for the resources of Napoleon III, and also for Spain and Austria it was starting to become more the trouble of keeping the independentists at bay, then the benefit of keeping Italy. Camillo Benso Count of Cavour, well aware of this, decided of taking the opportunity, not to found a Republic, which would have abolished the noble titles so dear to him, but rather to extend the reign, that would have maintained and amplified his importance. He was certainly not moved by any Italian patriotism, being himself unable to speak Italian, though he had the knowledge to achieve his goal: on his side he had the rank of officer the Royal army, the experience as minister of Agriculture and and Finance, the aristocratic and European education, the snobbery of not sitting at the same table with commoners, and the support for the progressivism and industrialisation, that he knew and that he had deeply studied and felt incumbent in Europe, though not realisable in Italy without its unification. Having almost the opposite ideas with Mazzini, they had the opportunity of quarrelling on many occasions.
Here is the incipit of a letter written from Mazzini to the Count in 1858, three years before the unity:
Sir,
I knew you, from long ago, you are way more fond of the Savoy Monarchy than of our common homeland; materialistic worshipper of the “fact” instead of the holy and eternal principle; man of cunning ingenuity more than of power, makers of shady parties, and, by birth and innate tendencies, against freedom; I did not believe you a liar. Now you qualified as such. […]
Emphatically avoiding to address Cavour by his noble title, Mazzini accuses the Count of slandering the Republican secret societies, for having called them dangerous for the future of the country and for the safety of the King (at that point King of Savoy, not yet of Italy) himself. An open would between Republican and the Monarchy, even if both for the unification of Italy. Mazzini adds:
[…]
Stupid and slanderer you were for sure at a time, when, to grab a disgraceful vote of concession, you declared to the dullard Chamber it was the life of the King Vittorio Emanuele that we were threatening. If the life of the King was under a real threath, it wouldn’t be your laws to protect it. To the strong tempered man of the sort of Pianori, Milano, Orisini, the law is of little or no importance: they kill or they die.
It is though the life of Vittorio Emanuele protected, first by the Statue, then by the inutility of his killing. Even if mutilate and often by yours betrayed, Piedmont Freedom is enough to safeguard the life of the King. Where the truth becomes way through word; where, even with sacrifices, the exercise of duty is unhindered, killing the king is crime and insanity. […]
You may have noticed here that, not the rights, not the comfort, not the material improvement, not the happiness, are the reason for a non-rebellious and functioning society. It is rather the freedom of speech and the duty of individual responsibility to guarantee the stability of a political system, and as a consequence, the safety of its leaders. About this topic, recurring in Mazzini’s thought, we will be telling more in the next chapter.
What happened after the 1858 is known history. From the conflict against Austria, the peace of Zurig, through the alignment of the Italian factions with the Savoy, to culminate with the expedition of the Thousands, and finally to the unification of the peninsula.
Mazzini, still exiled in London, and even if with two death sentences still pending on his head, was elected three times as deputy at the Italian parliament, and three times to vote was made void due to the death sentences.
In 1868 he left London for Lugano, and in 1870 with an amnesty for both sentences, he was allowed to be back to his homeland, only to be almost immediately arrested again for supporting the people’s rebellions against the Pope, and his third exile to Switzerland. This would be followed by his last return to Italy in 1872, under the false name of George Brown.
According to the legend, in crossing the border to Italy in this last commute, Mazzini had the opportunity of realising to be a travelling companion of Friedrich Nietzsche. This episode was told in a nowhere to be found Claudio Pozzoli “Nietzsche, nei ricordi e nelle testimonianze dei contemporanei” (Bur 1990) (even if never translated in English, the title would be ‘Nietzsche, in the memories and depositions of his contemporaries’), through the words of Nietzsche’s sister. What happened should therefore be taken with a pinch of salt, though we like to imagine their conversation, in some language, probably French, about the greatest systems of the world.
Thought: the only reliable sources are the original ones
In writing this first part about historical facts, I had no shortage of sources of information. It was a particular emotion for me to find myself with some of his original letters in my hands. Documents, whose only possession, had we been 170 years back, would have caused my arrest, my exile, or even a death penalty.
But now that we are approaching the ideas, to investigate the motivations underpinning the action of our philosopher and patriot, here the air becomes thinner. Here the critique starts to get fuzzier, to become more confusing and more often than not, contradictory. To verify what third parties have reported becomes for most cases impossible. For example, it is difficult to know if it is really true that the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Jesuits order, was reorganised and reinforced with the only goal of contrasting Mazzini’s philosophy, as some sources are claiming, or if there are letters, as other sources claim, where Mazzini would write to believe in Aliens. Of all the people I wrote about in my blog, Mazzini was the one where I spent most time, care and effort to select the sources. For reasons that I will try to explain in the next chapter, there are no complete anthologies, and the original works are often re-prints of badly scanned originals, produced by pseudo-unknown editors, and commented by passers-by intellectuals, or heavily twisted by a political colour.
Another difficulty, maybe related to the one of the sources, was the one of obtaining information about Giansenism, about how much was it hindered as a religious movement, how much was it spread across the population and when and how exactly it extinguished itself completely in the years following the unification of Italy. Having found almost none, and none reliable, I will save the reader any vacuous speculation. I can only notice that the writer Alessandro Manzoni and the inventor Guglielmo Marconi were coming from Giansenitst families, forming along with Mazzini a triad representing philosophy, literature and technology of the most advanced sort.
What we could say investigating on Giansenism, could be that, if the ideological foundations of Italy are part of a religious vision, today eliminated or lost, then there may not be much hope in being able to finalise the endeavour, or to maintain together its fragments in the contemporary.
But this is a ravine we will not go into this time. We will be quickly moving towards the original sources, with curious eyes, without caring about the consequent criticism. What are the words of Mazzini that so dangerous we should not hear about?
Excluding the innumerable letters and posthumous collections of letters, here are his main works (this list alone was to me an achievement, as not even wikipedia at the time of writing has a complete list of his works):
- Dell’amor patrio di Dante (About the love for his country in Dante), written in 1826, published in 1837
- La filosofia della musica (philosophy of music), 1836
- Atto di fratellanza della Giovine Europa (act of brotherhood of the Young Europe), 1834
- Fede e Avvenire (Faith and Future), 1835
- Pensieri sulla democrazia in Europa (Thoughts about democracy in Europe). 1846 – 1847 eight articles published on the “People’s Journal”, subsequently collected in one volume.
- I doveri dell’uomo (The duties of man), 1851
- Dal papa al concilio, dal concilio a Dio (From the pope to the council, from the council to God), 1871
Not many know that Mazzini was also an able guitar player, and a fine connoisseur of both classical and traditional music, it may therefore sound odd to find a book entitled “philosophy of music” amongst his works. In this essay, the philosopher outlines the fundamental importance of music for life, and how this importance is belittled and reduced to a “servile mechanism and silly toy for the rich and the indolent” by “the pedantry and the veniality”.
And also his vision about the choirs in the Greek tragedies, so similar to what Nietzsche will be writing in the “The birth of tragedy”; as well his relationship with Rossini, so similar to the relationship between Nietzsche and Wagner.
Although, it is in the “Duty of a man”, short and heartfelt, possibly an answer to ‘the right of men’ by Thomas Paine (1791), following the lead of “the words of a believer” by Lamennais (1831), and aimed at showing at the Italian working class the danger of the theory of Rights, wherever these were not counterbalanced by duty and responsibilities, where one can find the kernel of Mazzini’s philosophy.
The booklet is divided into 12 short chapters about the duties towards: humanity, homeland, family, oneself, freedom, education and progress: in what follows I will propose some essential parts, starting from the reasons why the theory of rights essentially limited, and that, against apparent logic, it would maintain the separation between classes unchanged, and the progress of societies and individuals impossible:
[…] And nonetheless, in this last fifty years, the source of social wealth and the accumulation of material goods have increased. Production had doubled. Trade, even though through continuous crisis that are unavoidable in the absence of absolute organisation, had conquered more strength in the activity, and a wider area of influence for its operations. Communications had acquired almost everywhere safety and rapidity, and diminished therefore, with the reduction of the costs in transports, the costs of food. And on the other hand, the idea of rights inherent to the human nature is today more than ever generally accepted: accepted in words, and hypocritically also by whom is seeking, in facts, to elude it. Why then had the condition of the common people not improved? Why had the consumption of products, instead of equally distribute across all members of the European societies, had fallen in the hands of few man belonging to a new aristocracy? Why had the new impulse communicated to the industry and the commerce had created not the wealth of most, but the luxury of some?
The answer is clear for anyone who wish to get into understanding things a bit. Men are creatures of education, and they do not operate in any other way than the educational principle that is given to them. The men who promoted the previous revolutions had founded their ideas of the rights belonging to the individuals: the revolutions conquered freedom: individual freedom, freedom of teaching, freedom of belief, freedom of commerce, freedom of everything and for everyone.
But what did the rights recognised to those who had no means of exercising them mattered? What did the freedom of teaching mattered to those who had neither the time nor the means to profit from it? What did the freedom of commerce mattered to those who had nothing to trade for, neither capital, nor credit? In all these countries where these fundamental principles were proclaimed, the society was composed of a small number of individuals, owners of land, credit and capital; and of vast multitudes of man having nothing but their hands, forced to provide them, as tools, to these first ones, and for any value in order to survive: forced to spend in material and monotonous labour the entire days: what was freedom for the people obliged to fight against hunger, if not an illusion, a bitter irony?
Because if had not been the case, it would have been necessary for the men of the upper classes to have made it possible to reduce the working hours, to increase their remuneration, to procure a uniform and free education for the workers, to make instruments accessible to all, to establish credit for the workers with skills, initiative and good will.
Now, why would they do it? Weren’t the material goods the supreme purpose of life? Why diminish ones possession for the benefit of others? So, help yourself, if who can: when society assures everyone that they can freely exercise the rights that are due to the human nature, the society does what it is required. If there are those who, due to the fate of their condition, cannot exercise any, well, they should resign themselves and do not blame anybody.It was naturale that they would have said so, and so they did. This morality of the classes privileged in fortune towards the poor classes becomes quickly the thought of every individual towards every one else. Each man took care of his own rights, and the right of improving his own condition without caring for anybody else; and each and every time his right where clashing with the right of somebody else, it was war: not war not of blood, but of gold and snares: a war less virile than the other, but equally ruinous: a bitter war in which the strong inexorably crush the weak or the inexperienced. In this continuous war, man educated themselves to selfishness, and to greed for material goods exclusively.
Again in the first chapter of his booklet, he writes to give credit for his intuitions to the people who had them before himself:
Italian workers! Brothers of mine! When Christ came onto the earth and changed the face of the world, He didn’t speak about the rights of the rich, who had no need to conquer them; nor to the poor who would have abused their right at imitation of the rich; He spoke not about utility and profits to people corrupted by utility and profits: He spoke of Duty, he spoke of Love, of Sacrifice, of Faith: he said that he alone would be first of all, who would benefit everyone with his work.
And these works, whispered in the hear of a society that didn’t have any spark of life left, revived it, conquered the millions, conquered the world and advanced the education of mankind one step. Italian workers! We are in an age similar to the age of Christ. We live in the midsts of an incapacitated society such as that of the Roman Empire, with the need in the soul to revive it, to transform it, to associate all its members and works in a single faith, under a single law, towards a single purpose, free progressive development of all the faculties that God has given as germ in his creature.
He also has something to say about the contemplative spirits and about the servile spirits, which is about the traditional catholics: thoughts that are in close proximity with what Nietzsche would say afterwards (for example in “to whom live the world behind the world”, or “Der Hinterwelter” in the Zarathustra):
We have to, you say, break us free from all the mundane things, and despise earthly life, to care about the celestial afterlife; but what is the earthly life, if not a prelude to the celestial and its starting point? Don’t you see that you, by blessing the last step of the ladder we all have to climb, and cursing the first one, you cut off our way? […]
Do you find more religious fervour in the Russian serf or in the Polish warrior, fighting on the battlefield for the homeland and freedom? Do you find more fervent love for God in the disheartened populace subjected to a Pope and a tyrant King, or in the Lombard of the Republic of the twelfth century and the Florentine of the fourteenth century? “Where the spirit of God is, there is freedom”, said one of the most powerful Apostles we know; and the religion he preached decreed the abolition of slavery: Who can really feel and worship God by crawling at the feed of his creature?
Yours is not religion, it is sept of man who had forgotten their origin and the fights their fathers had fought against an incapacitated society, and the victories they achieved by transforming the earthly word that you, contemplators despise today.
And in talking about laws and financial systems, things become even more interesting:
Therefore – and I quote these examples to show how from these first principles depend, more than people generally believe, the entire social structure – so the men, serving the same mistake, have, on one hand, ordered the political society entirely on the respect of the individuals’ rights, forgetting entirely the educational mission of the society; on the other hand men have ordered society uniquely upon social right, at the cost of freedom and individual actions (clearly I am speaking of the countries where with the constitutional monarchy, any social organisation: In the despotic countries there is no society at all; social right and individual rights are both equally sacrificed). And France, after its initial great revolution, and notably England, are teaching us how the first system lead to nowhere else than to inequality and oppression of the masses; Communism, if it could ever be set into practice, would, amongst other things, condemn the society to its petrification, removing from it any movement and opportunity for progress.
So the first ones, considering that the claimed rights of the individual, have ordered, or better disordered, the financial system, credits its only foundation the theory of unlimited and deregulated free competition, while the others, looking at anything but social unity, want to put the monopoly of every productive forces in the hands of the state: two concepts, the first of which gave us all the illness of anarchy, the second one all the illness and immobility of tiranny.
Two paragraphs. No more than that was enough to Mazzini to dismantle the myth of the invisible hand of the market, in capitalistic system with no rules other than “grab what you can”, and the myth of communism, that, prophetically, would have brought to a tyrannical society unable to any form of progress. When evoking the spirit of Mazzini, we are in front of a creature whose original thought brings him to be against the materialism of capitalism, against the stasis of communism and against the dominance of the clergy, which would create serfs instead of free men, and to which he contrasts a religious and fideistic vision of existence. Mazzini’s thought does not fit nicely in any of the boxes we have seen so far, though it is a thought and an action that brought to the unification of a country, against the will of way more powerful, numerous, and fierce powers.
Moreover, what other intellectuals have not managed to communicate in books, articles and entire academic careers, for Mazzini two paragraphs were enough. I would rather say, not even in books and articles the other intellectuals have managed the communicate the same depth and clarity of vision. And with that all, Mazzini is still a philosopher that finds no place in Italian school books?
Again from the duty of man, about the duty towards the family, Mazzini wrote:
I am talking to you about a time when, with your sweat and blood, you will have founded to the children a land of free people, founded on merit, on the good that any one of you will have done to his brothers. Until that time, you unfortunately have in front of you only one opportunity for improvement, only one supreme duty to do: put yourself together, get ready, chose the right hour and fight, conquer with the insurrection you Italy. Only then you will be able to satisfy without severe and continuous obstacles you other duties. And then when I will be more likely buried, re-read these pages I wrote: the few brotherly advice that these contain are from a heart that loves you and are written with the awareness of truth.
Love, respect the woman. Do not look into her only a solace, but a strength, an inspiration, the doubling of your intellectual and moral faculties.
Erase from your mind any idea of superiority: you have none. A long lasting prejudice had created, with an unequal education and a perennial oppression in the laws, that apparent intellectual inferiority used today to argument in favour of the continuation of the oppression. But the history of the oppressions hadn’t told you that the oppressor is always basing his theory on a fact created by himself? The feudal casts conflicted to you, children of the people, since almost until today in your education; then from the lack of education they argued and supported even today to exclude you from the sanctuary of the city, from the yard where the laws are written, from the right to vote, that starts your social mission.
About the duty of education, he tells:
The conscience of individual spake in the reason of its education, of its tendencies, habits and passion. The conscience of the wild Irochese spake a different language if compared to the one of the civilised europeans of the XIX century. The conscience of the free man suggests duties that the conscience of the slave can non suspect. Ask the poor daily worker from Naples or Lombardy, having had a bad priest as only apostole about moral, to whom, even if he can read, he was allowed to read only the Austrian catechism: he will tell you that his duty is the assiduous work at any cost to maintain his family, unlimited submission to the laws, whatever they may be, and not be harmful to other people: to whom would talk to him about duty bounding him to land and humanity, to whom would tell him: “you are harming your brothers accepting to work for a price that is inferior to the value of your work, you are sinning against God and against your soul in obeying laws that are unfair” he would answer to us like the one who does not understand, raising his eyebrows.
A neat difference if compared to Marx ideology. Marx, as the modern days neo-marxists believed that the two great enemies of the emancipation of the worker were the two constructs of bourgeoisie: faith and family. For Mazzini instead, these were not artificial constructs, but part of the human physiology, and the pathway towards progress, emancipation and cohesion of people.
The posthumous cancellation: a speculation about the reasons why Mazzini’s philosophy is no longer studied.
An idea of the first reason for Mazzini’s cancellation can be a consequence can easily be given by the number of chapters devoted to Marx in the typical highschool philosophy book, as the one cited at the beginning of the post. The first criticism to Marxisim, short, fulminant, lapidary and prophetic enough can only frustrate its contemporary supporters. For whoever wanted to study Marxists doctrine seriously could not prescind Mazzini criticism, though who want to use marxism for its political agenda and having the political consequent advantages, both in the academia and outside, can only erase the work of somebody that had already written about its theoretical limitation even before any possible practical attempt.
The second reason for its cancellation can very well be the appropriation of patriotic ideals of Mazzini during Fascism. Mazzini would have certainly negatively seen the Italian imperialism, having very clear ideas about what the borders of Italy should be, and he would have not approved anything goes against freedom of thoughts, reason, and individual choice. In particular, Mazzini would have not approved the Lateran treaty, possibly at the point of organising an armed rebellion against them. Certainly Mussolini had used the image of Mazzini for his propaganda, though to have “his” version of Mazzini to prevail above the authentic one, while using his image, Mussolini forbade the reading, distribution and printing of the original work of the philosopher
(interesting how, to continue the parallelism, this appropriation would look very similar to the appropriation of Nietzsche for the Nazi party in Germany).
A third reason for Mazzini’s purge, as for the purge of any non-catholic and anti-clerical religious movement and even any evidence of their existence during the resurgence of Italy, can be the one of its enmity with the pope, and its frontal attack, not against Christianity, as it is often wrongly said, but against the clergy. Studying Mazzini means studying the reality of a country fundamentally against the Pope, with rooted non-catholic currents already at the beginning of the ‘800; a country that can even find the strength to join its forces again a faith and religion against the clergy and the ever present power of the Vatican state, even getting at cannonading its walls.
From what we saw, for whoever loves canned ideologies, for whoever want to see anything as the byproduct of an existential machinery forcefully setting two poles against each others, such as right and left, and without placing facts in their historical perspective, Mazzini holds a thought that is too complex to be digested. It escapes contemporary political stereotypes supporting free and liberal education, technological progress, dignity and right of workers, universal rights and equality, political activity, and self education as a duty for every social class, endorsing armed revolution and agains anybody who oppress individual freedom, such as the possibility of doing its own duty, criticising the materialism of capitalism, and marxism as a doctrine that can lead only to disastrous consequences for every society where its principles will be applied. Deeply religious and deeply against the clergy, Member of British freemasonry, and opponent of its idealism, in favour of a popular view of the political participation. Patriot, and in favour of a pacific partnership across the nations of the world.
After having read the words written by his pen, with no intermediaries, it comes as a surprise that he had been exalted as the real fascist patriot by Mussolini, and then as red revolutionary, alongside with Garibaldi by the postwar period Marxists. Even today the so-called neo-marxists, count him, due to his patriotism, amongst the ideological creators of Fascism (alongside with Nietzsche and D’Annunzio), and due to his anti-clericalism, amongst the champions of the revolution of the people against religion, opium of the masses.
In short, the kind of person that had reasoned at length about the values and their relationship with the homeland and with God, and that had placed these values before comfort, alliances and friendships. And, as a result, he had very few political allies. Though, in my opinion, the three reasons named above, and the lack of allies, are not the real reasons why Italian students spend their time over philosopher totally useless for the history of Italy, and useless in general, such as Gadamer, and that they not consider studying Mazzini for a moment, even if the philosophical depth of his thought is comparable to the thought of Nietzsche or Schopenhauer, and his actions have had everlasting impact on the history of Italy, and in part of Europe. Why then is the real reason? That is left for you to think about.
– John Ludos
Sources
- [1] G. Mazzini “Scritti di Giuseppe Mazzini, Politica ed Economia – pensiero ed azione” Vol.1 e Vol.2, Hard Press, classic series. Orig. casa editrice Sonzogno, Milano.
- [2] G. Mazzini “Doveri dell’uomo”, The perfect library editore.
- https://spinnet.humanities.uva.nl/images/2014-07/mazzini-the-philosophy-of-music-1833.pdf
- https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risorgimento
- https://www.altaterradilavoro.com/mazzini-un-profeta-della-mistificazione-cristiana/
- “L’altro risorgimento. Una guerra di religione dimenticata” di Angela Pellicciari
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazzini_Society
- https://www.tesionline.it/tesi/scienze-politiche/mazzini-nell-ideologia-del-fascismo/18516
- https://www.kulturaeuropa.eu/2020/11/16/unautentica-ideologia-italiana-ce-mazzini-allorigine-del-fascismo/
Ma non è del “mago dei numeri” (titolo originale “Der Zahlenteufel” letteralmente diavolo dei numeri) che vorrei parlare.
Lo stesso autore dietro alla 
Geni in Compresse 
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